942 The Tree of Life

[MyNameCriterionForum]

There was a lot of excitable internet buzz about Malick and Chivo testing a Red One prototype for The Tree of Life.

Latest reports suggest they've used the RED M-X to shoot some of The Burial - but I'm predicting these will prove to be wildly overstated, if not also entirely false.

What camera is T.Malick's crew using in these pics?

[Nothing]

Right, but:

That is my RED ONE M-X, and I am the sweaty guy pulling focus. The majority of the movie will be shot on film.

I'd lay a bet that none of the RED footage makes it into the final edit.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

Right, but:

That is my RED ONE M-X, and I am the sweaty guy pulling focus. The majority of the movie will be shot on film.

I'd lay a bet that none of the RED footage makes it into the final edit.

Entirely likely, yes. Though at least for TOL, there are reports that Malick may have desired a "patchwork" of stocks and mediums, so...

Meanwhile, some rumors (or LIES) from various twitter comments:

Best #Cannes rumor I've heard so far: Terrence Malick planning a near-silent IMAX version of The Tree of Life for 1 year from now.

So apparently The Burial is going to be even more Malick-on-steroids than Tree of Life. How is that even possible?!

(this appears to be in response to a recent Jack Fisk talk?)

[Nothing]

Best #Cannes rumor I've heard so far: Terrence Malick planning a near-silent IMAX version of The Tree of Life for 1 year from now.

Well that would be Voyage of Time, wouldn't it. Would be great if the project is still alive, for sure...

lol - fights breaking out outside the Lumiere in a scrum to get in, they've had to set up an impromptu overflow sceening - unprecedented?

[Oedipax]

Mixed reactions from a handful of Twitterers so far.

Malick is over. A few booing - as expected - but a lot of applause too for a morning press screening.

Tree of Life: Many will find it metaphysical & poetic, tho some may think it fragmented & showy. Fuller thoughts shortly.

I love me some Malick, but THE FOUNTAIN > TREE OF LIFE. #Cannes

And so it came to pass that Tree of Life was a pretty, heartfelt but preachy folly of universal proportions. #Cannes

[MichaelB]

First screening greeted with light applause and a small (and localised) outbreak of booing. Not that that says very much.

My favourite tweet so far:

Lots of people talking about their need to process The Tree of Life. They mean they need to see what other people are saying and copy that

[Duncan Hopper]

Tree of Life = glorified perfume ad

They could be right, but who really takes anything LWL says seriously?

visually breathtaking and technically masterful, but excruciatingly drawn out and annoyingly pretentious

Ditto Total Film.

And so it came to pass that Tree of Life was a pretty, heartfelt but preachy folly of universal proportions.

Loud booing at end of Malick's Tree of Life but I loved it. Book of Revelations by way of Main St. Almost ridiculous, always sublime

[ellipsis7]

The Guardian goes finding Terrence Malick on the Croisette...

[Nothing]

Indeed, Little White Lies are a shower of cunts.

The divided response must be pretty much as expected so far, including the third-rate critics just waiting to jump in and play the 'pretention' card before the credits have even rolled. Bradshaw's review this afternoon will be interesting. And how are the serious US and French critics taking it, I wonder? That would be a better barometer of the jury.

[Duncan Hopper]

Malick's back with a lavish, disappointing, but bizarrely beautiful prayer of a film. He's got God!

[Duncan Hopper]

Anyway, enough of this Tree of life stuff, lets get down to the real business, the new Bruno Dumont film finishes its first screening soon. Though I don't expect the twitter flood as with Tree of Life, I still need details.

[MyNameCriterionForum]

...including the third-rate critics just waiting to jump in and play the 'pretension' card...

Indeed, I'd love to know when people started confusing ambition and genuine knowledge with pretension. Apparently anything that requires contemplation or doesn't tie itself up in a pretty, concise bow is "pretentious". And the clowns comparing TOL unfavorably to The Fountain are just stellar dullards; was Aronofsky a Rhodes Scholar? Did he teach at MIT or translate Heidegger? Have these critics any frame of reference outside of movies? Embarrassing.

In many ways, filmmakers like the Dardennes, et al are far more pretentious, despite the "street level" or "journalistic" qualities of their work.

[Duncan Hopper]

Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life is a Christian folie de grandeur that's often breathtaking

[ellipsis7]

A first full length review, pretty positive, Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter...

Brandishing an ambition it’s likely no film, including this one, could entirely fulfill, The Tree of Life is nonetheless a singular work, an impressionistic metaphysical inquiry into mankind’s place in the grand scheme of things that releases waves of insights amidst its narrative imprecisions. This fifth feature in Terrence Malick’s eccentric four-decade career is a beauteous creation that ponders the imponderables, asks the questions that religious and thoughtful people have posed for millennia and provokes expansive philosophical musings along with intense personal introspection....

[Nothing]

"Tree of Life is an Exceptional and Major film" - Todd McCarthy

[Duncan Hopper]

Bradshaw's review this afternoon will be interesting.

The Tree Of Life is magnificent and mad

[Finch]

LOL @ the tweet quoted by MichaelB. Not surprised by the allegedly mixed response since The Thin Red Line also got accused of pretension and the initial reviews of The New World weren't uniformly positive either.

[Finch]

Tree of Life press conference

edit: a rave from Peter Bradshaw

positive reaction from Variety

[Nothing]

A pity Bradshaw isn't on the main jury...

[rs98762001]

A mixed response to Malick is par for the course, but I'm heartened that the smarter critics and writers out there have been mostly awed by it. The worst putdown so far comes courtesy of who else but Stephanie Zacharek, who makes her entire reaction irrelevant with the snarky line, "...The New World, which probably tops even Tree of Life in the pretentious snoozefest department."

[Tom Hagen]

Stephanie Zacharek makes her entire reaction irrelevant by being Stephanie Zacharek.

[Finch]

Amen to that. Find it hard to believe that the Guardian couldn't find more qualified critics for their Malick video posted this morning. Fair enough if some people don't like Malick's work but the lazy labelling of his work as "pretentious" is so infuriating - if you don't like it, then at least dismiss it in an intelligent manner.

[matrixschmatrix]

That is an annoying criticism- what is the pretense they are accusing Malick of holding? You could legitimately accuse someone of being pretentious for being a Malick fan, I suppose, insofar as that's true of any difficult art movie, but applied to the movie itself it doesn't really make any sense.

[Mr Sausage]

Almost no one who uses the word pretentious these days knows what they mean by it. For the most part it's a dim expression of their own philistine anti-intellectualism and, what's more, their laziness, since they get to summarize in one pat little word the entire conceptual thrust of a movie without actually having to engage with or understand any of the ideas being worked through.

"What does this mean? I don't know. Well then it is pretentious. So I don't have to!"

Malick's movie may end up being pretentious, but it'll take more than a single viewing to determine that, I'm sure.

[Tom Hagen]

Come on guys, everyone knows that dinosaurs are pretentious.

Today's critics have no patience for films that deal in the big metaphysical issues. Makes me wonder what would happen if L'Avventura screened at Cannes today. Oh wait . . .